Cracked Glasses and Crimson Roads
by Prettyone33
Summary: ShiHou, anyone? A bored oneshot I wrote up. It really wasn't supposed to be this way, and Iori wonders how far he'll go to save a life.


Based off of the song Kagerou Daze

August 15th. 12:30 PM.

Iori checks his phone, and it proves to be true.

Then he notices that the weather is nice outside, not excessively hot and not freezing.

It's a normal, humid summer day, and Iori knows he is dreaming the moment he steps onto the same playground he steps on every day. The sun suddenly becomes burning hot, searing the charcoal-colored blacktop as he steps on its surface.

He is Iori Shirou, eleven years of age and still shorter than the average 5th-grader.

His blonde, bouncy curls cascade down his back as he pushes his glasses up, searching for the other boy that should be here.

He's here.

Houka Inumuta, eleven years of age. Taller than the average 7th-grader. Sitting on the swings, seeming oddly incomplete without his signature laptop in his hands, instead preferring to hold a small black kitten instead. His sky-blue turtleneck is pulled way up to cover half his face, like usual.

It's just a normal day. Iori tells himself that every day for a hundred days and nothing will change.

Iori walks up to him. The other boy's blue hair sparkles in the sunlight as Iori sits down on the swing beside him.

There was nothing to do, so they struck up a conversation.

"Y'know, I kind of hate summer..." Houka murmurs, staring into the crystal-blue sky as he softly strokes the small black kitten. It mews and licks its paw, causing a small smile to come to Houka's lips as the kitten starts purring.

The kitten unexpectedly leaps out of Houka's lap and runs across the street. Startled, Houka gets up, leaving the swing still partly shaking and creaking.

He proceeds to follow the kitten's trail, right across the street.

Right into the path of the truck Iori knows will come.

Suddenly, the unexpected yet expected truck comes speeding out of nowhere, right into Houka's path. The boy screams again and again in Iori's mind as the truck slams into and crushes him, sickening crunching sounds along with the dark red of blood splattering across the pavement.

Iori chokes at the scent of fresh blood, and the sky that seemed so clear earlier fades away into a dark blue.

Houka's body lays in the midst of all the red, having ceased breathing just a moment ago. His perfect eyes are filled with horror and forever open, the forced gaze landing on Iori before glazing over. The sounds of the ambulance and people screaming falls on Iori's deaf ears and his widened amber eyes as he watches the scene play over and over again. Houka's bloody sky-blue turtleneck is the only thing Iori can see besides his shattered glasses lying on the sizzling red pavement.

From behind him, he hears a mocking voice murmur amusedly, "This is all real!"

And for a split second, he believes him.

A small black kitten walks safely to the other side, quite aware that it has just caused the demise of a certain blue-haired boy. Some red splatters onto its thick obsidian coat, and it casually wipes it off with a flick of its paw.

The kitten comes up to a clock, one of several thousand. Paw still dripping with blood, it paints across one of the clocks with the bloodied paw and smirks as it dashes away.

Iori blinks as he awakes on his bed, without his glasses. He quickly reaches across to the recently painted nightstand, grasping his glasses and putting them on. The world immediately focuses under the panes of transparent glass, no longer foggy and unclear.

His room is exactly as he left it. Neat and tidy, every small thing put away in the dresser, drawers, or closet.

What time is it?

Iori expectantly stares up at the clock, an overwhelming hopelessness crashing down on him like an empty void as he realizes that it is August 14th, sometime past 12 in the morning. Maybe 12:04.

And he knows the inevitable will come.

"Doom..."

At the park, Houka is already waiting for him. Iori stares down at the ground, not willing to meet Houka's clear, innocent eyes behind his transparent frames. For some reason, he feels as if he shouldn't be here any longer.

"Houka?" He speaks up nervously, messing with his fingers.

"Yes?" The other boy is still stroking the kitten, its shining black fur gleaming in the sunlight as it purrs.

"I had a dream last night, and we were walking in this exact park... I think we should go home now. I mean, I think we should go somewhere else." Iori stammers out, turning slightly red.

Houka blinks. "Okay."

Iori lifts his head, his blonde curls swirling in the slight wind, and knows that it won't be safer to stay any longer.

"C'mon. Let's go." Iori firmly grasps Houka's skinny wrist and pulls him up from the swing, leaving it slightly swinging in an awfully familiar creaking sound. The kitten mews and falls out of his lap, running away across the street.

Houka shoots a glance at the kitten, but is stopped by Iori.

"Let's go."

As the two boys pass by the construction site, everyone around them points to something in the sky and screams. Iori looks up, right before the object, a steel pole, falls and impales Houka straight through his chest.

Time stops again.

As the pole rips through him, Houka lets out a piercing scream as his sky-blue hair becomes mixed with candy red once again.

A smirking voice behind Iori whispers to him, in a way that he somewhat remembers;

"This is the real thing!"

Iori is tempted to believe him, but he is tired and weary of all the death. The scent of blood comes over him once again, and Houka's motionless, bloody body seems to be somewhat smiling, red slowly dripping down the edges of his twisted smile and onto the floor...

Far away somewhere, a cat marks another bloodstained clock.

It is almost unreal, the way Iori feels every day. After all, he is only a child.

Every day seeing Houka killed in some way, and the voice tormenting him, and then waking up from the same nightmare he has again and again.

Iori is at the swing again. He's taking Houka up a flight of stairs.

Someone smirks and the last thing he sees of Houka is his beautiful, beautiful eyes as he falls down the stairs in apparent slow motion.

Houka is shot. Clubbed to death. Drowned. Caught in a raging fire. Strangled. Every day, Houka is killed and it is driving Iori to insanity.

This has to stop.

Iori's amber eyes have long lost their playful, childish gaze. He has realized that this cycle has been repeating for decades. He's going to be forever caught in this never-ending nightmare unless he does something.

Iori blinks awake from his daydream as he sees a flash of night-black fur speed past him onto the road. A familiar head of messy blue hair goes after it, and Iori knows exactly what to do this time.

"Houka!" Iori shouts and dives at him, pushing him out of the way as the truck comes closer. It rams into his small body, his dandelion locks becoming stained in a surprisingly familiar red.

Iori barely hears Houka's frantic screaming and the tears that fall from his perfect bright eyes as he sees them for the last time. Iori only smiles.

Because if that voice laughed "Serves you right!" one more time, then that would be just fine by him.

It would just be a normal summer day.

. . .

But that all ends today.

. . .

Somewhere, a small black cat smashes what remains of one thousand-odd bloodied clocks. It turns to face an unseen viewer, sticking a rough tongue out and washing itself with its paws of the blood staining its perfect coat.

On August 14th, Houka wakes up in his bed, and before he realizes it, tears are slowly falling down his extra-pale face. His laptop lays untouched by the nightstand, its owner too startled and shivering to move it or make an attempt to turn it on.

"I failed Iori this time too..." He quietly sobs as he cradles a sickeningly familiar small black kitten.

END


End file.
